A Different Kind of Gold Sickness
by The Misty Jewel
Summary: There was Smaug, then Thorin, then Bilbo, each suffering from the same ailment, yet in different ways. Mild/mentioned Thilbo Bagginshield, and unbetaed, so please forgive any mistakes! **SPOILERS for BoTFA**


**A Different Kind of Gold Sickness**

Thorin is drifting. After having such hard ground to stand on, such a set task, now that he's completed it, he is nothing.

_He. is. nothing._

There is no pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, or at least not figuratively. The reward is not a reward, there is no rush of joy, nothing suddenly becomes right with the world.

What is there to do? The citizens of Dale request he return his end of the bargain, and the elves, those greedy, fairweather friends, are amassing an army against him.

What is there to do? Gandalf is no where to be found, he has not gotten word from his kin yet, and he does not know if help will arrive.

What is there to do? The dwarves seem to think everything is over with, done, no more, accomplished, and Bilbo has grown farther and farther away, spending long hours watching the sky and the people and the horizon, instead of talking, instead of laughing, instead of smiling like he used to.

There is nothing to do. His entire life amounts to this, this gold, this pile of rubbish, it's all he's ever wanted.

_Except it's not._

But what he truly desires cannot simply be pointed out, in fact, he doesn't know what he wants _himself_ anymore.

He has a guess as to what he might, truly, deeply, need. But it is a guess, nothing more, and he knows he can never have it anyways.

So there is nothing to hold onto, but this gold. This garbage, made useless and common by its sheer mass, the glittering fineries that are nothing compared to all the other glittering fineries and thus _none of it is worth anything._

But it's the only thing he has to really hold onto. So he does.

The gold is everything, he tells himself, and he believes it. He lets the film of greed slip over his eyes, making them hazy and useless to see the truth. He lets his anger and wants and grudges rule him. He lets go of everything, including reason, including love, including respect and honor and consciousness.

He cannot have what he truly wants, and _everyone thinks he has everything his heart desires already._

What a vile thing this world can be.

He drifts.

**o0O0o**

He truly knows what it must have been like for Smaug, to be poor from the very treasure he possesses, being powerless against his power, weak against his strength.

Bilbo has shown him an acorn of some sort that he acquired from Beorn's garden. He thinks about it. Somehow it is worth more than the gold he clings to, but he doesn't say anything close.

He belittles the tree-to-be, and leaves feeling he might have scared Bilbo more than helped him.

It's then he realizes that all he really cares about are people, the dwarves, the lives of those citizens from Dale, Bilbo, even the lives of those they only met in passing.

What is he to do? He is a king now, he cannot look weak.

He is weak against his strength. He cannot back down, not when everything rides on what he does here, now. He knows he has to set an example, but what example? He feels he must be going mad, and everyone seems to confirm it, in the way they look at him, the way they whisper behind his back, the fearful glances when he's not supposed to be looking.

He lets them all go. What he truly cares about doesn't matter anymore, what matters is the gold, and protecting it, and cherishing it, and _not being reminded that really he doesn't care about the gold at all,_ and that he's wasting lives every second he sits here in this cold, lifeless place that's been leaching the sun out of Bilbos cheeks since they got here.

Smaug is dead.

_There is a new Smaug under the mountain now._

Funny, isn't it? It was Smaug, now it's Thorin. He should be called Dragon under the Mountain instead of King.

He is a laughing stock.

He clings to the treasure, and one piece of starlight surfaces in the seas of roaring, seething blackness, one mission, one purpose to hold onto.

_The Arkenstone._

**o0O0o**

The hood over his eyes has been lifted.

The gold sickness is gone.

As miraculously as it left, it also leaves him with much work to do.

He has to say sorry.

But how does one apologize for something like this? For becoming such a monster, such a tyrant, that your own people, your friends, feared you?

It is unforgivable.

He lets the dwarves run into battle, leading them. Their blood has been waiting for this moment, it is perhaps what this has all led up to.

Who cares about the treasure. All he knows is there are enemies that need to die, and threats that need to be extinguished, and he cannot leave these lands unsafe.

When the blade enters his chest, he feels nothing.

When he stabs the ork in return, he feels

nothing.

When he looks to see the eagles flying, when he falls to his knees, when he stares up at the sky and wonders how he got on the ground, he feels

_nothing_.

He could die like this.

He could die. He's saved his dwarves, his hobbit, his kin from the Iron Hills. He's saved the people of Dale, the elves (Though he wonders if they deserve it.). The eagles are here and everything might end alright.

_All he has to do is close his eyes and never open them up again._

He makes his eyes stay open, because there's something missing.

_He never apologized to someone._

Who was it?

And then Bilbo appears at his side, out of nowhere, out of breath, and out of time, rambling and looking at the gaping wound in his abdomen that will never stand a chance to heal.

He has to tell Bilbo something.

He can never have what he truly wants.

Not gold, not power, not strength, not loyalty, not the throne.

He can never have what he truly wants, as cliched as it sounds.

Bilbo's true loyalty, his bravery, his smile, his laugh, _his heart._

His last breath is used to say sorry to the only person who really seems to matter at the moment.

In his last sights, Bilbos hair looks like gold.

**o0O0o**

Bilbo sees the light go out in Thorins eyes, and just wants to disappear again. He has the ring, after all.

But he wants a different kind of disappear.

When he gathers his few possessions and makes to leave the Lonely Mountain for what could be the last time, he wants to disappear.

He never wants to be found, either.

But he is, by Balin, and he has to smile and hug each dwarf and look happy for them.

He has tried telling Balin, but as usual he can't communicate a thing.

He tries to say that Thorin was-

Thorin was more than just a _leader_, he was a friend.

He was more than a _friend_, he was-

He can't. It would never have happened anyway.

He can't. So he shuts down.

Bilbo takes the small chest of riches on his journey back, and when he opens the lid, he pointedly ignores the sapphires and diamonds that remind him of Thorins eyes. Those jewels still have so much light in them. Thorins light is all gone by now.

Gandalf senses something is different, but no doubt decides it is the end of the journey that has been bothering Bilbo.

To be honest,_ it is._

Bilbo never wanted this journey to end. No matter how much he hated some aspects of it, he'd give anything-

_-anything-_

-for it to continue. For that sheer joy and wonder and danger to never stop, for there to always be new lands to map and explore, and new threats to destroy and people to save and mountains to reclaim and adventurers to accompany-

He'd give anything for Thorin and Fili and Kili to still be alive.

When Gandalf blows smoke rings, Bilbo refuses to watch them for very long, because when they become wisps in the air it looks all too similar to the streaks of gray in the fur of that coat the Dwarf King was always seen wearing.

Bilbo holds the ring in one hand, contemplating it by the fire.

He wants to disappear.

**o0O0o**

The moment he gets home to the Shire, he feels a part of him die.

This is it.

_The End._

How pety these people are, how they don't mourn him, they take his belongings and laugh and don't care that he's not even dead.

They were his friends, and then they turned their backs on him, taking his possessions with smiles on their faces and not one tear for the fact that he was presumed dead.

He knew a certain bunch of friends that would never give up hoping.

Yet these people did.

_Why did he even come back?_

**o0O0o**

He can't take it any longer, and goes to visit the Lonely Mountain again.

For all the trouble the journey is, he can't bring himself to stay more than two weeks at the mountain. He speaks to the dwarves and they welcome him with open arms.

_He doesn't deserve it._

He left them for the Shire and the Shire wasn't even worth it and why did he ever leave and how can they let him back in so easily-

He writes a letter each night, one to each dwarf. He keeps them all until the last night, when he writes the final letter, the one to Thorin.

The King was buried far beneath the mountain, but there is a monument that represents his grave, and it's good enough.

The piece of granite that serves as a grave depicts a face he hasn't seen in many years.

_How many years has it been?_

He can't remember, he's lost count.

He writes the last letter as slowly as possible, the page slowly filling with ink like a cup with water.

He walks up to the grave. It's the middle of the night and he looks ridiculous and he doesn't care.

He signs his name on the paper, using the side of the granite monument as a surface to support his pen, and tucks the paper away in an off-colored envelope.

He leaves it sitting against the grave, in plain sight.

He knows no one will take it, no one will read it, no one will bother it. Dwarves have an amazing respect for the dead, and for privacy.

He's written everything he ever thought about Thorin in that letter.

The good.

The bad.

_All of it._

He leaves the letters to the other dwarves on each of their doorsteps, and packs up to leave quietly.

He is gone before the dawn.

_While the mountain is still in sight,_

_he never looks back._

**o0O0o**

The ring calls to him every waking moment, and he is so tired. He's nearing his next birthday (He's grown far too old) and he wishes it would go away.

He tries to lose it a couple times. But somehow whenever he throws it, it never leaves his hand, as if he doesn't have enough to bother him with.

It (He's decided to call the ring an "it") whispers to him all the time. It says it understands what this pain is like, this hurt that cuts so deep, the pain of a future thwarted and gone forever, nothing but dust.

The ring whispers. It says it knows how to solve the pain, the riddle of anguish in his own aging mind.

_Just put me on,_ it says like a snake. _I won't bite._

He thinks it will though.

Eventually, at his birthday party, he decides to do it. He disappears. It's the first real fun he's had in a long time (Oh what a long time) and he feels a rush of joy as he walks back to his home and picks up the belongings he's packed since he plans to leave the Shire once and for all.

He picks up an off-colored envelope. It reminds him of another one, laced with so much grief, and he looks away.

He drops the ring in the envelope and a great weight seems to be lifted.

He is free.

**o0O0o**

Of course, freedom has a way of spitting in your face, he decides. The journey is long and hard, like all journeys he's had the luck to travel, and when he arrives at his destination he remembers that the world is a much unhappier place than what he likes to pretend.

The shadows are closing in and he feels cramped and stuffy no matter where he goes.

He just wants to be free, truly free.

Frodo arrives, sick and weary, and the elves treat him. Bilbo almost immediately senses the ring, and it dampens whatever happiness he has left.

Frodo talks with him, but he can barely understand a word the boy is saying, what with that ring there in the room, pleading to him silently.

He knows what it's like to be Smaug, to be tortured by the object he has protected for so long.

The ring calls, _and he turns into someone else for a moment._

Then he turns back.

Frodo is the most scared Bilbo has ever seen him.

Bilbo gives him the chain mail shirt made of silver steel that Thorin had gifted him with many years earlier. His heart aches to see something of such sentimental value go, but he knows it's for the best. Frodo is obviously on the path to becoming an adventurer. He needs all the protection he can get.

Bilbo doesn't bother trying to apologize to Frodo anymore than in words. The boy shouldn't forgive him. He doesn't deserve forgiveness, and he knows it.

**o0O0o**

"I think it's time for one last adventure." He says, as he climbs aboard the boat to what he hopes is a better world.

Frodo joins him. The boy is far too scarred from what he's been through to continue in this place, with these memories. Sam hugs him, and they set sail.

In his last sights, before they slip into the next world, he notices the sky is the same pale color as Thorins eyes,

_like diamonds and sapphires mixed together._

**o0O0o**

**A/N- So I basically wrote this to just get down my headcannon of what those two dorks were thinking during the movies, and tbh it came out much more angsty than anticipated! Hope I didn't drown you in cliches and horribly written angst!**

**Review and you get a hug from Bilbo! Or Thorin if you want!**

**-Misty**


End file.
